^04 THE CANADIAN EnToMOLOGIST. 



writers. Dr. Fitch suggested that the eggs or larvK may have been 

 accidentally carried to England, but Doubleday's explanation is doubtless 

 the more correct one. He says (The Zoologist, V., 1729) : "I have traced 

 all the specimens which I have seen of this species (the one described by 

 Stephens) in collections of British Lepidoptera to one source, and I 

 believe the gentleman who distributed them [Mr. Raddon is the gentle- 

 man referred to] inadvertently mixed a number of North American 

 insects with his British ones. I received from him as British a Bombyx 

 which my brother took in Florida; and Mr. Benjamin Standish possesses 

 two Bombyces, one of them a Cerura, the other perhaps a Notodonta, 

 from the same entomologist, which were sent to him as British, whereas 

 both are well-known North American insects." There can be no doubt 

 that several American insects found their way into the larger English col- 

 lections formed in the beginning of the present century ; and some of 

 these, as Doubleday points out, were described by Haworth and Stephens 

 as English insects. The evidence on this point is very conclusive as 

 regards Drasteria crassiuscu/a, Haw. 



Wood's figure {ib on the plate) and Doubleday's testimony are suf- 

 ficient evidence, I think, that the subgothica of Stephens and later writers 

 is our common American insect. But, is Haworth's subgothica the same 

 as Stephens's ? Probably Haworth's single type specimen could not now 

 be found, if it exists at all. Without the specimen, we must depend on 

 the original description and a little circumstantial evidence to settle this 

 point. Haworth's specimen may easily be the one which Mr. Barrett 

 recently found in an old English collection made up of specimens 

 obtained from older collections by a Mr. Burney, who was contemporary 

 with — and corresponded with — Haworth and others, and many of whose 

 insects ultimately fell into his hands (Ent. Month. Mag., XXV., 223). Mr. 

 Barrett says there was one specimen that proved to be really a type of A. 

 subgothica, and the specimen was not a variety of tritici. Mr. Dale says (p. 

 246 of the same magazine) that this specimen " probably came from Mr. 

 Raddon, the gentleman referred to by Mr. Doubleday " as having intro- 

 duced several American insects into English collections; Stephens's figure 

 was made from one of these specimens. Haworth's description seems to 

 apply very well to our American insect, and it also affords a valuable bit 

 of circumstantial evidence in the remark that he had seen the species in 

 only three museums. It is hardly probable that one of these three col- 



